Friday, 7 February 2014

Raking Over The Past

The Talk About Random blog asked its authors to write about any family
secrets that may have influenced or featured in their work. Here is my contribution:

I try not to deal in the real world too
much, either in my stories or in life if I can get away with it! And family
secrets are usually secret for a very good reason, so even if I discover any
recent ones they might be too close to be used in a book. Apart from the fact
that I suppose everything we write is a result of who we are and what has
happened to us, I don’t think I have used a specific event from family life in
one of my books.

Historical family secrets are a different
matter, though. The passage of time already lends them the air of a story, a
fiction, and one feels freer to play around with events, alter relationships
and enhance things. Again, I don’t think I’ve used specific events, but having
done a lot of research into my family history (I know, yawn!) I’m certainly
spoiled for a choice of eccentric characters and their involvement in tragic
and comic situations.

Take my great-great grandfather, Charlie.
He must have been a very popular chap, as he had at least eleven children
with various ‘House Servants’ who were in the service of his parents, before he
finally deigned to marry one of them, my great-great grandmother, at the age of
sixty. Quite scandalous for the time, I should think! Charlie was also hauled
up in front of the magistrate on a number of occasions for poaching, being
drunk and assaulting a policeman. His brother William on the other hand,
suffered from despondency and, to the great consternation of the town, blew his
own brains out with a gun in the family Ironmongers shop in the Market Square
one afternoon in 1835.

Charlie was also unknowingly involved on
the fringes of a tragic historical ‘first’. In the late 1820’s a nineteen
year-old lad, William Hawkins, called into the family shop and tried to sell
Charlie 20 shillings worth of lead. It quickly became apparent that he had just
stolen the lead from the roof of a brewery around the corner. Charlie was
called as a main witness at the subsequent trial and, it being Hawkins’ second
appearance before the beak, he was sentenced to fourteen years transportation
to Australia! The boy was led from the court in tears, only to be caught a few
days later climbing the prison wall in the company of a hardened criminal, in
an attempt to escape.

The Prison Hulk Justitia, Where Hawkins Was Held
Before Transportation

After a short time aboard the prison hulk
Justitia at Sheerness, he went to Sydney on the Albion alongside 187 other
prisoners. The voyage took six months and four convicts died on the journey.
William Hawkins survived, served his time and ten years later earned a ticket
of leave. Then, almost immediately, he got involved in what has gone down in
Australian history as the Myall Creek Massacre, a horrific and unprovoked
slaughter of innocent aboriginal women and children.

The gang of seven were caught and tried
and, despite their obvious guilt, found innocent. Due to public pressure there
was another trial, the gang were found guilty and William Hawkins and his
cronies became the first white men in Australia to be hanged for the murder of
Aborigines.

Myall Creek Massacre As Published In Chronicles
Of Crime 1841

One of Charlie’s daughters, my great-great
aunt, married the mad Squire of Rawcliffe Hall in the 1870’s, and he was up in
front of the magistrate on countless occasions for, among other things, setting
fire to an occupied windmill to celebrate bonfire night; being accused of
stealing vast quantities of jewellery; throwing his solicitor in a water
trough; dog fighting, badger baiting and riding horses to death, for which he
was finally given three months well-deserved hard labour. These are just a
handful of the Squire’s many escapades, some awful, some rather comic.

Just one of hundreds of newspaper articles about the mad squire!

So, my research has uncovered plenty of
family secrets that I could choose to use in my stories, and certainly names
and characters have definitely made appearances. The Mad Squire deserves a book
of his own, though! One day . . .